The View From the Bridge: Memories of Star Trek and a Life in Hollywood (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The critically acclaimed director and writer shares his account of the making of the three classic Star Trek films

The View from the Bridge is Nicholas Meyer's enormously entertaining account of his involvement with the Star Trek films: STII: The Wrath of Khan, STIV: The Voyage Home, and STVI: The Undiscovered Country, as well as his illustrious career in the movie business. The man best known for bringing together Sherlock Holmes and Sigmund Freud in The Seven Per-Cent Solution had ironically never been interested in Star Trek until he was brought on board to save the film series.

Meyer shares how he created the script for The Wrath of Khan, the most revered Star Trek film of all, in twelve days-only to have William Shatner proclaim he hated it. He reveals the death threats he received when word got out that Spock would be killed, and finally answers the long-pondered question of whether Khan's chiseled chest is truly that of Ricardo Montalban. Meyer's reminiscences on everyone from Gene Roddenberry to Laurence Olivier will appeal not only to the countless legions of Trekkies, but to anyone fascinated by the inner workings of Hollywood.

About the Author

NICHOLAS MEYER is a noted author, screenwriter, and director. In addition to the Star Trek films, his many credits include an Oscar nomination for the screenplay of The Seven Per-Cent Solution (adapted from his New York Times bestseller), writing and directing the classic SF thriller Time After Time, and directing The Day After, the controversial film about nuclear war that became the most watched movie ever televised. Most recently, he adapted Philip Roth's novella The Dying Animal for the screen as Elegy.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (August 20, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 067002130X
• ISBN-13: 978-0670021307
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #17,494 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Even on Star Trek everyone's human., September 5, 2009

By	Found Highways (Las Vegas) - See all my reviews

The View from the Bridge is the most interesting book about how movies get made I've ever read. Nicholas Meyer talks about the art and the commerce both, and shows how each influences the other.

The way Nicholas Meyer became a screenwriter and movie director in the 1970s was similar to Michael Crichton. Meyer parlayed a screenplay based on his own bestselling detective-adventure novel about Sherlock Holmes and Sigmund Freud (The Seven-Per-Cent Solution: Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D. (Norton Paperback)) into a chance to direct another of his screenplays (Time After Time) about the time-traveling H.G. Wells and Jack the Ripper. After that Meyer began the tradition of making "good" even-numbered Star Trek movies by directing Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

Even though Meyer makes it clear he understands making movies like Star Trek is a business (he never would have gotten into what he at first considered ludicrous space opera if not for the money), he never once in this book uses the word "franchise." His films are stories, and he wants audiences to relate to them as tales about real people (as William Shatner said, even on Star Trek everyone is human), not as interchangeable portions of a video game.

The fact that the title of Meyer's memoir alludes to a play by Arthur Miller as well as the bridge of the starship Enterprise proves he means it when he says he intends his work to be art. He characterizes himself as not a creator but a re-creator of stories. This doesn't sound like false modesty because there's very little modesty in the rest of the book.

But no one thinks less of Francis Ford Coppola as a film artist because he made movies from a pulp novel about the mafia or from a book about Africa on high school English reading lists that usually goes unread.

Meyer's early films are his best--The Seven-Per-Cent Solution with Nicol Williamson and Robert Duvall, Time After Time with Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, with Ricardo Montalban, and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. His early TV work is also good--The Night That Panicked America, about Orson Welles's War of the Worlds broadcast, and The Day After, a TV movie staring Jason Robards about the horrific effects of nuclear war that became part of the national debate surrounding the Reagan administration's military policies.

Nicholas Meyer is still making films about real people. I hope he gets to make his Don Quixote.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars To explore the strange new world of Hollywood, September 4, 2009

By	wogan "the book reader" (Severna Park, MD United States) - See all my reviews

I have to admit that when I get a book I scan through it first and initially I was disappointed since I assumed this would be a book mainly about Startrek and giving all the inside gossip about who did and said what. If that's what you are looking for avoid this book; but then you would be missing a fabulous voyage into how films come into existence.
Nicholas Meyer directed or was involved with the Startrek II, IV and VI films. He also is responsible for many other highly regarded films such as The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Time After Time, and The Day After. You begin to realize how refreshing it is not to have a story filled with nasty gossip as you become engrossed in the details of how a motion picture is made; the scripts, the storyboards, the music- how it fits and helps . There is much to learn here, and it is written in an easy, entertaining way. He describes the differences between an American unit and an European one and how e mail and computers have changed the creation of movies. There is a marvelous comparison of successful stories (including the Startrek series) and Horatio Hornblower. This is really a successful voyage in the undiscovered country of making films.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great read for Trek fans, September 24, 2009

By	Galen K. Johnson "Galen" (Siloam Springs, AR) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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Nicholas Meyer is like JJ Abrams: a Trek outsider who brought a new vision and along the way came to love the characters as much as the rest of us. I read this very quickly because it is so interesting, and I am very impressed with Nick's skill with words.